How Apple makes more profit on their systems... By controling the support sphere

[Tom Buskey]

On Mon, Oct 5, 2009 at 10:47 AM, Jon 'maddog' Hall <maddog at li.org> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I have been watching this conversation for the past couple of days, and
> I would just like to throw in a small observation.
>
> People like Apple because of their design, because things plug together
> seamlessly, because everything works well.
>
> One simple reason for this is that Apple controls, to a large extent,
> both the hardware and software from top to bottom.
> They also get to test a much smaller test matrix of hardware and
>

...

Absolutely.  Apple customers are more likely to chose Apple products then
not.  Or buy from the Apple store that has tested more then the average 3rd
party.


> software with every release of their OS.
>
> Not having to deal with all the different vendors is a great cost
> savings and a path to stability that Microsoft would have trouble
> achieving.
>
> Witness the rock-solid systems like VMS, MVS and other proprietary
> systems developed on in-house manufactured hardware.
>
>
Or Sun or HP-UX systems.


> But it comes at a price, both monetarily (prices to the consumer), with
> interoperability, and with "Freedom".
>

It depends where you put your value.  If I discount freedom in the hardware
(by buying a laptop where everything is already chosen), I still have quite
a bit of freedom in the Software.  I can run Linux on any of the macintoshes
sold today.  I've run it on PPC systems too.

Apple hasn't been as free with their hardware in the past (the 68k systems)
and the iPod/IPhone are in that group, but the x86 systems have been fairly
open to different OSen and software.


>
> Sure, Apple makes "more profit on their systems".  But it is because
> people buy them....and people buy them despite the closed nature of the
> development system because they are stable, well designed and do what
> some people want.  It is a lot easier to do that when you have control
> of the entire system from beginning of design through manufacture. QED.
>
> I have watched Linux systems improve for the past 15 years.  Free
> Software is amazing, and it is getting better. Certainly the GAP has
> closed between FOSS and Microsoft. The gap may or may not close between
> Apple and FOSS.
>
>
The Gimp vs Photoshop is a good example.  Gimp can do everything Photoshop
does, but people like the look & feel of Photoshop.....
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